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Author Topic: Harrying Enemy Backlines During Battle  (Read 2515 times)

Deshara

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Harrying Enemy Backlines During Battle
« on: September 28, 2018, 05:23:27 PM »

an option, when engaging a large fleet who isn't deploying most of their fleet, to have your reserves harry their undeployed ships during the course of the battle.
Simple suggestion for giving a larger fleet trouble; if you engage a fleet and it's "civilians" are larger than your fleet you have the option to "harry while engaged". If the enemy deploys all of their non-civilian ships and you haven't by the end of the fight, their un-deployed ships will have their stats hit as if harried during a retreat at the end of the battle, giving you (potentially) the ability to double-harry all of the non-military ships in a large enemy fleet if you can force them to deploy all their ships without deploying all yours and win and then harry them as their whole fleet retreats
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Hiruma Kai

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Re: Harrying Enemy Backlines During Battle
« Reply #1 on: September 28, 2018, 07:05:55 PM »

From a game mechanics standpoint, what does this actually gain the player if they choose this option?  Say the opposing civilian ships have their CR drop from 70% to 50%.  If you harry instead of engage, now their CR drops to 30% and they're running away on the campaign map?

Isn't it better simply to engage the civilian ships and get the salvage?  50% vs 70% on civilian ships doesn't feel like it matters.

I feel like you'd need a lot more under the hood mechanics going on to make this a good choice.  As it stands, can NPC fleets actually run out of supplies (i.e. their CR starts dropping due to 0 supplies)?
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SCC

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Re: Harrying Enemy Backlines During Battle
« Reply #2 on: September 29, 2018, 02:33:05 PM »

It would be nice if you could select a "harass reserves" option, pick some ships for the task, then need to capture and hold points for some time in the battle proper, in order to let the harassing force slip through and do its job. Player could fight to achieve something else than straight-forward victory.

Megas

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Re: Harrying Enemy Backlines During Battle
« Reply #3 on: September 29, 2018, 03:41:26 PM »

It would be nice if you could select a "harass reserves" option, pick some ships for the task, then need to capture and hold points for some time in the battle proper, in order to let the harassing force slip through and do its job. Player could fight to achieve something else than straight-forward victory.
If my fleet can capture and hold points, they are probably powerful enough to kill everyone.  If my fleet is weak enough, they will be unable to hold points or steal them from the enemy.  Why settle for finesse when you can muscle through the enemy for total victory?
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Cik

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Re: Harrying Enemy Backlines During Battle
« Reply #4 on: September 29, 2018, 04:19:06 PM »

It would be nice if you could select a "harass reserves" option, pick some ships for the task, then need to capture and hold points for some time in the battle proper, in order to let the harassing force slip through and do its job. Player could fight to achieve something else than straight-forward victory.
If my fleet can capture and hold points, they are probably powerful enough to kill everyone.  If my fleet is weak enough, they will be unable to hold points or steal them from the enemy.  Why settle for finesse when you can muscle through the enemy for total victory?

don't you say those words to me ever again
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Deshara

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Re: Harrying Enemy Backlines During Battle
« Reply #5 on: September 29, 2018, 04:28:23 PM »

From a game mechanics standpoint, what does this actually gain the player if they choose this option?  Say the opposing civilian ships have their CR drop from 70% to 50%.  If you harry instead of engage, now their CR drops to 30% and they're running away on the campaign map?

Isn't it better simply to engage the civilian ships and get the salvage?  50% vs 70% on civilian ships doesn't feel like it matters.

I feel like you'd need a lot more under the hood mechanics going on to make this a good choice.  As it stands, can NPC fleets actually run out of supplies (i.e. their CR starts dropping due to 0 supplies)?

well I'm thinking more along the lines of fights big enough that ships start running out of CR and are forced to disengage. They don't happen much now but I'd imagine once the player owns factories...
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Darloth

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Re: Harrying Enemy Backlines During Battle
« Reply #6 on: September 30, 2018, 07:27:08 AM »

If doing this added an additional capture node to the combat, and it was WAY off to one side, such that if either side commits a lot of forces there they'll lose the center...

Then the battle now has two potential objectives.

Do you want to divert forces to allow a harrassing force to get through?  If you've already selected the option and then don't choose to go for that node, will that cause damage (CR or real?) to your reserves because you sent them off without support?

Maybe you're losing the battle so you fall back over there and at least get your harriers through?

I think it has potential if structured properly, so that it adds potential outcomes to the combat rather than -merely- being a distraction.
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Cik

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Re: Harrying Enemy Backlines During Battle
« Reply #7 on: September 30, 2018, 08:56:04 AM »

personally i always felt like big engagements (by big i mean "enormous" that is to say many fleets on many) should probably be a series of simultaneous deployments where you have to choose who to send where and then if during the battle you "breakthrough" it can turn into your ships attacking their undeployed support ships / attacking the real objective (station, planet, whatever)

battle at this moment is just "trundle to the middle, have a shootout, win / lose) the majority of the time. if you look at big naval battles they tend to develop over days and have a bunch of isolated actions (often counter to what the admirals plan..) see: taffy during leyte, etc.

what might be nice would be just expanding the field in large battles. keeping the relatively small arena we have in small battles would be fine, and since your CR doesn't degrade when unengaged an arbitrarily scaled map is no longer a big deal.

what might also help is a "phase-based" battle system where in large battles you can't necessarily deploy all of your heavy hitters immediately. then make objectives be useful for something (terrain control as the objective and not something you ignore) which would split the battlefield up a lot more.

but yeah i'm not against this either. but making it a more "organic" part of a breakthrough or something in a battle might be cool.

i guess ideally the "tactics / gambits" would be skilltree in the leadership thing that would give you access to tricks you can pull to shake up deployment/terrain and push it towards your advantage. perhaps you can deploy enemy ships he doesn't want to deploy, you can move the terrain around to favor you, or instead of deploying from the top he deploys from the left etc.

possibilities are endless ofc.
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Hiruma Kai

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Re: Harrying Enemy Backlines During Battle
« Reply #8 on: September 30, 2018, 10:59:25 PM »

If doing this added an additional capture node to the combat, and it was WAY off to one side, such that if either side commits a lot of forces there they'll lose the center...

Then the battle now has two potential objectives.

Do you want to divert forces to allow a harrassing force to get through?  If you've already selected the option and then don't choose to go for that node, will that cause damage (CR or real?) to your reserves because you sent them off without support?

Maybe you're losing the battle so you fall back over there and at least get your harriers through?

I think it has potential if structured properly, so that it adds potential outcomes to the combat rather than -merely- being a distraction.

I'm confused though, the battle objective has never been hold the center.  The battle objective is to destroy the enemy fleet or force it into retreat.  This is why Alex had to add CR, otherwise you could get into stalemate conditions.  If the battle objective is something other than destroy the enemy fleet, what prevents the enemy fleet engaging you 15 seconds later on the campaign map and running into an infinite combat cycle?

Having a "breakthrough" node on one side just means you'll fight on that side.  There's nothing at the center of the map which makes you automatically win or lose.  The current "satellites" while nice, aren't exactly game changing.   There would need to be a fundamental shift in the combat paradigm to make this viable.  Right now, if you're losing the battle, that is a major setback for the player.  They only have one fleet.  Do you really care that you destroyed a couple of buffalos in the back when you've just lost all your capitals?  You're not even getting any salvage.  So why do you care that your harriers got through?  The NPCs effectively have an infinite number.  There would need to be a campaign objective making it worth losing your fleet in order to destroy a couple support ships to have this matter.

personally i always felt like big engagements (by big i mean "enormous" that is to say many fleets on many) should probably be a series of simultaneous deployments where you have to choose who to send where and then if during the battle you "breakthrough" it can turn into your ships attacking their undeployed support ships / attacking the real objective (station, planet, whatever)

Really large battles are already broken up into multiple deployments, so this is already kind of there.  Sending ships into more than 2 deployments is generally going to be putting them into danger of malfunctions, so there's incentive to spread the deployments.

The fundamental problem with "breaking through" and having a sub-set of your fleet attack their "support ships/objective", is support ships or the objective don't currently do anything for the NPC ships (or if they do something right now, make it actually noticeable to the player).  If they were or there not there in the NPC fleet would have no effect on their behavior currently in the battle.

However, what I do see happening right now in fleet battles I've fought is carriers hanging in the back, sending fighters forward to support line ships.  You can already have a fast player controlled ship slip around the main battle lines and hit carriers from behind (early game something like a Wolf or Medusa vs Condor, late game SO Aurora vs Heron or Astral).

Similarly, you can also pull distractions where a single fast frigate (for example a kite) keeps 2 or 3 destroyers busy while the player controlled ship engages a single destroyer.  Very early game I've used this a lot, and it doesn't hurt that the AI almost naturally does this.  Just present your fast frigates first, keep your ship back, once the destroyers take the bait, and split off, move in with a fast player ship while they're split.

If you use the command points, you can actually shape when and where your and enemy ships engage.

battle at this moment is just "trundle to the middle, have a shootout, win / lose) the majority of the time. if you look at big naval battles they tend to develop over days and have a bunch of isolated actions (often counter to what the admirals plan..) see: taffy during leyte, etc.

what might be nice would be just expanding the field in large battles. keeping the relatively small arena we have in small battles would be fine, and since your CR doesn't degrade when unengaged an arbitrarily scaled map is no longer a big deal.

what might also help is a "phase-based" battle system where in large battles you can't necessarily deploy all of your heavy hitters immediately. then make objectives be useful for something (terrain control as the objective and not something you ignore) which would split the battlefield up a lot more.

Out of curiosity, what battle size do you play with?  The default 200?  Minimum 150? Max of 500?  On the smaller battle size end (i.e. 150-200), its distinctly possible to have completely separate action going on two sides of the map.  Take something like a Heron, with 0-flux boost or a Onslaught burn driving. It takes about 60 seconds to get from one edge to the middle of the map, which means you could already have up to 2 minutes of travel time for cruiser and capitals (don't get me started on the Paragon) between fights in the same deployment.

The general problem is you'd need to make that terrain control worth more than focusing all your force at a single point at a time.  What do you see as the rewards for this terrain control?  If the AI splits their fleet equally in two to take two terrain control points, I'm going to take my entire fleet and engage one half of the enemy fleet on the board. If these terrain control points are important enough that I have to hold them or lose, then you've reduced the options for the player in the battle.  Before where I could bait a portion of the enemy fleet with a couple frigates and reduce their focus, now I'm forced to engage at well defined points instead of when and where I want to.  Such control points would make it more of a trundle to the middle and fight rather than less.

but yeah i'm not against this either. but making it a more "organic" part of a breakthrough or something in a battle might be cool.

i guess ideally the "tactics / gambits" would be skilltree in the leadership thing that would give you access to tricks you can pull to shake up deployment/terrain and push it towards your advantage. perhaps you can deploy enemy ships he doesn't want to deploy, you can move the terrain around to favor you, or instead of deploying from the top he deploys from the left etc.

possibilities are endless ofc.

What terrain in the game do you consider favorable?  I'm also not seeing what deploying from the left would do.  Being able to control which ships the enemy initially deploys is I suppose potentially interesting, but in all cases before an end game fleet, they're just going to deploy their entire fleet.  Also, from a logical stand point, why wouldn't non-combat ships simply immediately retreat from their side of the board and get replaced by reinforcements?  Certainly if the reverse happened to player, they'd just retreat their fuel ships and send in their combat ships.

Personally, I'd rather see tactics and gambits evolve from actual combat situations rather than a menu option that unlocks with a skill point.  And its already there in some ways.  Could it be better?  Probably, but the suggestions made here would need a lot of fleshing out to make some of these choices actually meaningful, and I'm guessing a lot of reworking of some of the game's fundamentals.
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